It started with Blondie, and ended up as a Zoo with a crew!

Leave the Light On

As we are nearing the adoption finish line, I got this crazy idea in my head that we should take a family vacation. I thought it would be awesome to reward my kids for the many sacrifices they made. I wanted to show the little ones that they are part of this madness, forever! There’s no turning back now, and even though I get a whole lot of “omg, really?” out of my teenagers, I was thinking this is truly a cause for celebration! We’ve been down a long road, and finally, the light at the end of the tunnel is shining through. I know what you’re wondering… “WHAT were you thinking? A road trip, with 7 kids??”

I’m not really scared of spending days in the car with lots of people. That I can do. I know how to pack crayons and PSP’s, zip-lock bags full of Chex Mix and M&M’s. And I’ve got my 50 states license plate game ready to go! What’s starting to scare me is that I think I’m over budget and we haven’t even packed our bags yet. Is it way too tacky to put up a sign that says “Prestridge Zoo Now Accepting Vacation Donations?!”

Maybe I should take a picture of my kids at the end of the day, when their hair is all messy and their faces are dirty- they look pretty much homeless by 5:30pm most days! Then I could glue it to a few coffee cans and spread our vacation fund around town.

OR, maybe I could follow the kids around with the video camera until I catch them doing something goofy enough to go viral on YouTube. I hear that whole “Charlie bit me” video has already paid for some private school tuition and is still stashing the cash away. My kids bite. Heck, even the dogs are scared of them!

I was kind of considering the idea of hi-jacking a tanker truck, you know, for gasoline, but then I thought it would be kind of hard to hide at this little house, and my luck, instead of being an exciting installment of the Fast and The Furious it would turn out more like “America’s Stupidest Criminals” when they pull up to arrest me for parking it right there in my driveway. Well, where else am I supposed to keep it? I don’t exactly have hundreds of acres at my disposal… And if I did get away with it, I’m sure it would turn out to be some third-rate watered down gasoline that leaves the old ugly van on the side of the road!

Maybe this could get us around for a week or two!(courtesy of Wiki)

Speaking of the old ugly van, my hubby tried to talk me into a new vehicle for the trip! Heck no!! The last thing I wanna do is write a check for that! I say patch her up and keep her rolling, at least til February when Uncle Sam gives me my money back! I don’t know why he keeps on borrowing from me month after month, pretending its tax dollars when we all know he just gambles it away. I just can’t see myself ever buying a brand new car again. Think about it, the second you drive off the lot, you’re upside down. You’ve lost half of what you haven’t even paid yet. I think I’d rather something that has already been broken in. Let someone else run it back to dealership to get all the kinks out. Let someone else go through the anxiety attack accompanied with the first scratch. Let someone else pay Uncle Sam an outrageous amount of taxes on it, and then I’ll buy it a year or two old, pay a third of the original price and enjoy it with a lot less stress.

My hubby did buy me a brand new 2008 Dodge Caravan. It was sweet, fully loaded, sleek black paint job, running lights, electric doors, and it did everything except wipe my nose for me, and you know what? It made me sick to my stomach every night. I couldn’t keep watching my husband work so hard to make that payment when every time I opened the doors, something went wrong. Moldings came off the Sto N Go seats, the brakes were defective, I had to keep washing it all the time because black has to be super polished, and the interior was cheaply made because they just don’t build things to stand up to the test of a big family anymore. Getting rid of it was the biggest relief of my life, and I’m never going back down that road!

But I would like to hit the road with my family and take a little vacation. I’ve yet to find a hotel room for less than $100 a night, and I’m sitting here wondering what the heck happened to $39.99 and someone who was gonna leave the light on for me?

If I don’t get it figured out soon, this place will turn into the Heartbreak Hotel, minus the Elvis impersonator, so wish me luck!

Now tell me, who’s hoarding the coupon for a free night’s stay??(courtesy of Google images)

Gotta go, headed back to Google to continue my search for “cheap hotels”. You wouldn’t believe what kind of stuff that brings up! All we need is a change of scenery and a few more smiles to fill the scrapbook and we can call this summer GOOD!

These kids make me so proud, even when they don’t want to!

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